Peter Greenaway applies his lush, layered
cinematic style to the customarily austere Japanese aesthetic,
with mixed results. Pillow Book is an extravagantly beautiful
film, but like Nagiko (Vivian Wu), the empty, self-obsessed fashion
model at the center of the story, it's doubtful whether all this
beauty means anything. When she was a young girl, Nagiko's father
used to paint calligraphic characters on her face for her birthday;
as an adult, Nagiko is obsessed with having her lovely body written
upon as a sort of Whitman-esque celebration of herself: "I
need writing," she says. "Don't ask why. Just take out
your pen and write on my arm." Later, Nagiko becomes an author
and starts inking up the bodies of men, notably Ewan McGregor,
who along with a host of other taut young men, graces us with
that rare, sought-after cinematic moment: Full-frontal nudity.
Greenaway's slavish devotion to form is dazzling, but the lack
of content becomes painfully apparent as this two-and-a-half hour
movie winds along.